Impact of environmental target constraints on high-quality economic development of resource-based cities

Abstract

[Objective] The constraint of environmental targets is a regulatory means for resource-based cities to alleviate the conflict between environmental protection and economic development according to local conditions, providing new opportunities for factor flow in the path constraint of resource dependence for resource-based cities. Clarifying the multi-factor interaction mechanism is of great significance for exploring the realization mechanism of high-quality economic development in resource-based cities. [Methods] In this study the authors manually compiled the main environmental pollutant target constraints at the city level since the 11th Five Year Plan period for 98 resource-based cities from 2006 to 2022 and quantified their differences. The fixed-effect model is used to test the impact of environmental target constraints on the high-quality economic development of resource-based cities, and the moderating effect of factor flow and the threshold effect of resource constraints are analyzed. [Results] (1) The constraint of differentiated environmental targets promoted high-quality economic development of resource-based cities, and the conclusion still holds after endogeneity and robustness tests using instrumental variables, replacement variables, and other methods. (2) The constraints of environmental targets have a positive interaction effect with the inflow of labor and capital. (3) After resource constraints exceeded the threshold value, the promoting effect of environmental target constraints on high-quality economic development of resource-based cities and their interactive moderating effect on factor flows weakened. [Conclusion] Environmental target constraints and factor flows formed a good positive interactive relationship, which helped the high-quality development of resource-based cities. However, resource constraints still limited their direct and moderating effects. Therefore, resource-based cities should take environmental governance as a breakthrough point, form a good interactive relationship between regional factors, gradually break away from resource dependence, take advantage of circular cumulative causal effects, and promote high-quality development.

Keywords

• environmental target constraints|differentiation|resource-based cities|high-quality economic development|factor flows|resource constraints|china